The Wall
Most founders start a company because they have some vision of what success looks like that’s motivating enough for them to take the leap.
Maybe it’s being on a magazine cover, or celebrated by everyone at a gala. Maybe it’s having a huge home on a private island, or being surrounded by girls in a club. Maybe it’s a sense of complete, calm control, of having full freedom over your future.
For me, probably because I’m a big skier and alpinist, it has always been this image of being on a summit. Wind in my hair, air in my lungs, exhilaration on my face. Pure victory.
It’s probably good that founder life looks like a fantasy from the outside, because no one would do it if they knew, if they could feel, what it’s like in reality.
For me, that reality feels like a wall.
The wall can be anything. Indeed, in the last five years, the wall has been everything for me: figuring out what customers want, building a high quality product, getting positioning right, cracking distribution. It’s been raising money, recruiting great people, keeping them happy. The wall has been dealing with myself and my own shortcomings. Indeed, it’s often many of these things at once.
And there’s only one way to get to the other side of the wall. And that’s through.
Confronting wall after wall means some days I can feel helpless.
But then, I remember: I’ve been here before. I've made it through. And each time, I've relied on 3 core skills to make it.
In fact, 100% of successful founders I know do these three things consistently to scale their walls in their own startups and win.